Maria Theresa introduces new discriminatory legislation against…

Maria Theresa introduces new discriminatory legislation against Jews, who are excluded from most professions.

Pursuing an anti-liberal policy in religious and civil matters, the archduchess of Austria and queen of Hungary and Bohemia, wife and empress of the Holy Roman emperor Francis I, and mother of the Holy Roman emperor Joseph II, is under the most reactionary sections of the Catholic church throughout her life. (She is the last of the Catholic monarchs to close the establishments of the Jesuits, to whose Society she herself is devoted.)